Why So Blu?

9 Sends Gregg Into Coma

French playwright Jean Giraudoux once said, “Only the mediocre are always at their best.”  And so is the case of Shane Acker’s new film, “9.”  I’m not going to give much away so don’t worry about spoilers.  However, once you’ve hit the 30-minute mark in the film, you pretty much get the idea of what will happen next.  Dialogue is minimal which literally left me scratching my head as to why they signed on big name actors such as Elijah Wood and Jennifer Connelly for this movie.  I can summarize the gist of the script right here.  Ready?  “Oh!”  “We have to go back!”  “No.”  “I’m going in!”  “No.”  “Oh!” 

And there you have it folks, a very disappointing film of burlap dolls running around while they’re attacked by hodge-podge machinations.  The film started off well as creation number 9 begins to discover the world around him with childlike curiosity.  Once he meets up with some more of his kind, the movie heads south and gets there in a hurry.  It was just far too much of the same after a short while and the ending left me wondering what the heck I just watched.  Was this about technology, souls, magic or some distorted combination of the trio? 

I will say that this will be a reference-quality Blu-ray once it makes its debut on that wonderful format.  The audio will rattle your window frames and you can expect the video to be flawlessly crisp.  Then again, who buys a bland story just because the book has a nice cover?  I did when I was a kid and had garage sale money burning a hole in my pocket.  Now I’m a big kid and I’m wiser and I would not give this film a second look. 

Even people behind me exiting the theater were trying to make sense of it all.  One woman asked, “I don’t get it.  They were stuffed animals brought to life and then what??”  I had such a witty line set up for this film had it exceeded my expectations, “9 is worthy of a rating that mirrors its title!”  Yeah, well out of a scale of 1-10, I give “9” a 5.  In the end, my only bragging right about this movie is being able to say I saw “9” on 9-9-09.  Yay.